Category: Now Playing

The Western may be among the most American of genres—if not the most American of genres—but that has never stopped filmmakers from around the world, from Italy to Japan and beyond, from trying it on for size. In Slow West, winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 2015 Festival, English writer-director John Maclean doesn’t transpose the genre to Europe—he brings a European sensibility to the American West. Considering the preponderance of immigrants who migrated to and settled in America, it wasn’t exactly a crazy notion.

Michael Fassbender stars as a bounty hunter in romantic pursuit of a female fugitive in John Maclean’s award winner Slow West, a European rendering of the classic Western that brandishes its six-shooters with a serving of gallows humor. Also coming to theaters in May, director Andrew Bujalski trains his lens on the idiosyncratic world of fitness trainers in Results, starring Guy Pearce, Kevin Corrigan, and Cobie Smulders. Check out all of this month’s releases below.

Journalistic ethics and the relationship between storytelling and the truth are at the forefront of True Story, a compelling cat-and-mouse drama that marks the debut feature from acclaimed theater director Rupert Goold. The film, which premiered out of competition at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, stars Jonah Hill as Mike Finkel, a disgraced New York Times reporter, and James Franco as Christian Longo, who’s been arrested for the murder of his wife and children. The director, who also adapted the screenplay from Finkel’s memoir, True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, acknowledged the importance of casting the right actors, for what is essentially a two-hander.

While we lament a dearth of Sundance-supported releases hitting theaters this month, April is still apt for film viewing from the couch with a gathering of great stories coming to DVD, Blu-Ray, and On Demand. Among the small batch of theatrical releases, Rupert Goold’s True Story—yes, based on a true story—follows disgraced New York Times reporter Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill) and convicted murderer Christian Longo (James Franco) in a tale of journalistic ethics and unlikely relationships. And if you’re so inclined to do your viewing from home, check out 9 #ArtistServices titles newly available on Netflix and a crop of indies coming to DVD and Blu-Ray.

This article was originally published following the premiere of 52 Tuesdays as part of the World Dramatic Competition at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.On the heels of Richard Linklater’s 12-years-in-the-making drama Boyhood, another film from the 2014 Sundance Film Festival has been made under a similarly innovative process. For her directorial debut 52 Tuesdays, Sophie Hyde shot her film exclusively on Tuesdays for 52 consecutive weeks, giving actors their scripts only a week in advance and only for the scenes that involved their characters.

Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, the Zellner Brothers’ mythical, Fargo-influenced drama leads a batch of Sundance-supported releases hitting theaters this month. Kumiko premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and screened at last summer’s Sundance NEXT FEST. David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, a brazenly creepy teen horror also comes to the screen after premiering at Cannes and screening in Sundance’s Midnight section.

With the announcement of the 2015 Sundance Film Festival program forthcoming, we round out this year’s slate of Sundance-supported films with a small but vigorous pair of theatrical releases – and a crop of Festival favorites coming to DVD and Blu-Ray in time for the holidays. Greg Barker’s We Are The Giant continues to gain pertinence with the ongoing detainment and trial of one of the film’s primary subjects, activist Maryam Al-Khawaja (read more here), while the Audience Award winner in World Dramatic Competition, Difret, finally brings its engrossing tale of abduction and forced marriage in Ethiopia to theaters.
In Theaters
Friday, December 12
We Are The Giant, directed by Greg Barker

Difret, directed by Zeresenay Mehari

DVD & Blu-Ray
Tuesday, December
Frank, directed by Lenny Abrahamson
Dead Snow 2: Red vs.

Before we turn our collective attention to a new season of independent film, a handful of releases from the 2014 Sundance Film Festival round out the year. Director Mona Fastvold’s unsettling drama The Sleepwalker, recently picked up by IFC, meditates on several fractured relationships forced to run their course in a secluded Massachusetts mansion, while Amir Bar-Lev’s Happy Valley provokes a far more disturbing variety of distress in its scathing deconstruction of the child sex abuse scandal at Penn State.
Below, check out all of the Sundance-supported films hitting theaters and coming to DVD and Blu-Ray.

First-time filmmaker Peter Sattler got the inspiration for Camp X-Ray, a gritty drama about soldiers watching over suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, after he watched documentary footage of a guard and a detainee discussing the books on a library cart.“It was the most surreal, absurd interchange I’ve ever seen in my life,” Sattler told the audience at the film’s Sundance Film Festival premiere last January. “I saw this vision of a two-hander, one room-type of movie where these two characters just talk.

Five award winners from the 2014 Sundance Film Festival make their way to theaters this October, led by the Grand Jury Prize winner Whiplash, starring Miles Teller as a tenacious drum virtuoso training under the tutelage of a notoriously demanding mentor in J.K. Simmons.

Prior to its premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, The Skeleton Twins had been billed as a non-comedy starring Saturday Night Live vets Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig as estranged siblings. As it turns out, this description isn’t quite accurate. While the film is at times a very affecting and penetrating drama, it also contains as many genuine laughs as any “drama” in recent memory.

As we collectively lament the closing days of summer, a handful of new releases help usher in a promising fall season for indie film. The ever-enigmatic singer-songwriter Willis Earl Beal offers a captivating portrayal of a musician caught in the trap of creative inertia in Memphis, and Belle & Sebastian front man Stuart Murdoch officially makes his foray into filmmaking with the pensive musical drama God Help The Girl. Bringing some levity to the month’s releases – though still sharp and thoughtful – is Craig Johnson’s The Skeleton Twins, which tracks the reunion of estranged twins expertly played by Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig.